In the 2010 movie The Trip, Steve and Rob(real names used:
Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon) take a trip together across the
UK with the purpose of dining at renowned restaurants for a
review. It was a nice movie but the sequel, A Trip to Italy,
came up short, very short. Not much of a story and the constant
improv-like dialog and imitations that were charming in the
1st movie become tiresome and annoying in the 2nd movie
because it was an endless lets-try-to-be-funny continuously
with no reprieve and again, no story.
Yes to The Trip (2010)
No to A Trip to Italy (2014)

Dan999 wrote:I started to watch a preview of "A man Called Ove", and accidentally hit the rent button.
It was ok, I got used to the subtitles quickly. They were large and clear.
The move was somewhat enjoyable, but I would not rent it again, nor say it was a great movie.
It was informative on how other countries live, but had the predictable ending.
Dan999

We saw this film last night. I don't know how else they could've told this story but I thought the comedy bits depicting suicide attempts could be hurtful to family members of suicide victims. I think he tried suicide four different ways: hanging (several times), carbon monoxide poisoning, gunshot, and standing in front of a moving train. The joke was that he was always unsuccessful. For this reason I would not recommend this film. And it was boring; I found myself wishing for its end.

Last edited by Nicolas on Mon Jul 10, 2017 6:41 am, edited 1 time in total.

"The King's Speech" starring Colin Firth and Geoffrey Rush. We had previously watched "The Crown" on Netflix, which was helpful in providing some contextual familiarity with the time period and character portrayals in the movie.

MJW wrote:"The King's Speech" starring Colin Firth and Geoffrey Rush. We had previously watched "The Crown" on Netflix, which was helpful in providing some contextual familiarity with the time period and character portrayals in the movie.

I saw them in the opposite order from you, but both were wonderful, in whichever order

Room (2015) Brie Larson, William H. Macy, Joan Allen. I'd been wanting to watch this for some time now, but hadn't gotten around to it until the other day. I'm glad to finally watch it to see if Larson was worthy of an Oscar for her performance - she was. This movie was great, if sometimes hard to watch and very sad. I don't know if something like this were to happen in real life if the "escape" situation could go so smoothly, but I can understand, given the film's context, how Old Nick could be so easily tricked. The ending is very powerful. 4/5

Ex Machina (2015) Oscar Isaac, Domhnall Gleeson. A tech CEO invites a programmer to his estate to conduct Turing tests with a robot to determine if the AI passes the test, i.e. the programmer forgets he's talking to a robot not a real person. Isaac's performance is good but leaves the audience wondering if more emotion could've come from it. He seems caught up in his own power over the situation that his path to developing the AI in the first place is never completely explained. Why would he bother with it just to continually ditch it for a better version? Gleeson and Isaac play off each other like oil and water. I never get the feeling they're connecting with the script when they share screen time. 2.5/5

The other night I watched A Man Called Ove on a DVD I borrowed from my library.

Although I think that a book is generally better than its movie or television reproduction. In this case, I think that this movie really is quite good. The acting in particular was very good, particularly Rolf Lassgârd as Ove and Bahar Pars as his Iranian-Swedish neighbor. The two child actors who played Pars' children also were very good. The features that came with the DVD were quite good, as well. I just wish that it had come with subtitles, because it was hard for me to understand the speakers, given that I'm hard of hearing and the actors had accents, to boot.

gkaplan wrote:The other night I watched A Man Called Ove on a DVD I borrowed from my library.

Although I think that a book is generally better than its movie or television reproduction. In this case, I think that this movie really is quite good. The acting in particular was very good, particularly Rolf Lassgârd as Ove and Bahar Pars as his Iranian-Swedish neighbor. The two child actors who played Pars' children also were very good. The features that came with the DVD were quite good, as well. I just wish that it had come with subtitles, because it was hard for me to understand the speakers, given that I'm hard of hearing and the actors had accents, to boot.

Coincidentally I also watched it this evening, and thought it was exceptional. Previous reviews on this thread were mixed.

I watched it on Amazon prime, and it was Swedish with English subtitles. Are you saying your DVD was English dubbed?

Dan999 wrote:I started to watch a preview of "A man Called Ove", and accidentally hit the rent button.
It was ok, I got used to the subtitles quickly. They were large and clear.
The move was somewhat enjoyable, but I would not rent it again, nor say it was a great movie.
It was informative on how other countries live, but had the predictable ending.
Dan999

We saw this film last night. I don't know how else they could've told this story but I thought the comedy bits depicting suicide attempts could be hurtful to family members of suicide victims. I think he tried suicide four different ways: hanging (several times), carbon monoxide poisoning, gunshot, and standing in front of a moving train. The joke was that he was always unsuccessful. For this reason I would not recommend this film. And it was boring; I found myself wishing for its end.

I agree, except, we were so bored we did turn it off way before it was over.

gkaplan wrote:The other night I watched A Man Called Ove on a DVD I borrowed from my library.

Although I think that a book is generally better than its movie or television reproduction. In this case, I think that this movie really is quite good. The acting in particular was very good, particularly Rolf Lassgârd as Ove and Bahar Pars as his Iranian-Swedish neighbor. The two child actors who played Pars' children also were very good. The features that came with the DVD were quite good, as well. I just wish that it had come with subtitles, because it was hard for me to understand the speakers, given that I'm hard of hearing and the actors had accents, to boot.

Coincidentally I also watched it this evening, and thought it was exceptional. Previous reviews on this thread were mixed.

I watched it on Amazon prime, and it was Swedish with English subtitles. Are you saying your DVD was English dubbed?

No. The DVD, itself, had subtitles; however, the special features that were on the DVD were not subtitled.

This is a movie version of an Agatha Christie novel, featuring Hercule Poirot investigating murder on a beach at a vacation hotel on an island. Of course almost everyone there has a motive, but no one apparently has an opportunity to commit the murder. A very good movie.

"Everything should be as simple as it is, but not simpler." - Albert Einstein |
Wiki article link:Getting Started

I watched episode-4 when I was staying at a hotel and was disappointed that I would not be able to see its continuation because at home I don't have a TV. But then I discovered that episode-5 is currently available online.

Victoria

WINNER of the 2015 Boglehead Contest. |
Every joke has a bit of a joke. ... The rest is the truth. (Marat F)

In the Washington, DC, area watching previous seasons of Poldark requires enrolling in the PBS Passport, at $60/year or more. I intentionally live without a TV to limit my watching, and so getting a PBS subscription would be a slippery slope. But may check Poldark out when Season 3 starts, when episodes are free to everybody for the first two weeks after being aired.

Victoria

WINNER of the 2015 Boglehead Contest. |
Every joke has a bit of a joke. ... The rest is the truth. (Marat F)

In the Washington, DC, area watching previous seasons of Poldark requires enrolling in the PBS Passport, at $60/year or more. I intentionally live without a TV to limit my watching, and so getting a PBS subscription would be a slippery slope. But may check Poldark out when Season 3 starts, when episodes are free to everybody for the first two weeks after being aired.

Victoria

Isn't it on Amazon Prime?

Also, watched Dunkirk today. Extremely well-done. Really adds something to the canon of WWII movies. Not to be missed.

In the Washington, DC, area watching previous seasons of Poldark requires enrolling in the PBS Passport, at $60/year or more. I intentionally live without a TV to limit my watching, and so getting a PBS subscription would be a slippery slope. But may check Poldark out when Season 3 starts, when episodes are free to everybody for the first two weeks after being aired.

Victoria

Isn't it on Amazon Prime?

Also, watched Dunkirk today. Extremely well-done. Really adds something to the canon of WWII movies. Not to be missed.

I'm waiting until I have a couple hours without the kids to watch Rogue One on Netflix. Looking forward to that.

Dunkirk (2017). Christopher Nolan's fictional account of the colossal mistake by the Allies and the effort to rescue upwards of 300,000 soldiers from the beaches of France. Suspenseful, yet hopeful throughout. This movie has emotion and drama, unlike some reviews have said, but it's more subtle in between the large scale evacuation efforts and action sequences. 4.5/5

A Hijacking was about a Danish cargo ship taken by Somali pirates. It's more dramatic, IMO, than Captain Phillips. It's tough to top Tom Hanks as an actor, but the script was mainstream Hollywood. There was no bravado here but just plain humanity and their trials and tribulations. The CEO of the Danish ship was hell of a negotiator, as portrayed earlier in the film. However, as the negotiation prolonged, it took heavy toll on his crewmen and himself.

Somehow, the Danish government was never mentioned or involved. It was left to this private company dealing with the pirates. I enjoyed both but found the human elements of A Hijacking depicted much more depths, as well as tensions.

Trainee veterinarian Clover Catto returns to the farm where she grew up after hearing news that her brother has died in what appears to be a suicide.
Finding the family home in a state of horrendous disrepair following the 2014 floods that devastated the area, Clover is forced to confront her father Aubrey about the farm, the livestock and, crucially, the details surrounding Harry's death. (Synopsis taken from Inter-Library Loan database.)

I was ready to give up on the movie after the first ten minutes or so. I stuck with it, though, and I'm glad I did. It's a very good film. The acting of the two leads (Ellie Kendrick and David Troughton), was exceptional, but the support cast also gave sterling performances. Warning: This a downer of a movie.

Dunkirk. I guess I should have seen it in IMAX; but it was still a pretty good flick in a regular theatre. Suspenseful. Not that gory for a war movie. Great if you like the sound of automatic weapons fire in the morning.

Dunkirk - a well-made movie that is not even close to being accurate. Too neat and tidy. Which is why it is doing well at the box office.

Whoosh re Dunkirk.

What were your specific criticisms? Compared to the hoopla of "Saving Private Ryan" I thought it was a far more satisfying and less manipulative movie-- avoiding most of the standard cliches of a war movie (which SPR could not resist throwing in).

There is moviemaking in the movie, and it does overemphasize certain aspects of the story, in particular the role of the "small boats".

Nolan plays with timelines (e.g. the narrative arc of the Spitfire, that, and its flying is the least plausible part of the movie), but that's his style.

But I thought it caught the panic and desperation of an army in retreat, and, conversely, the very small and personal acts of heroism. Men being both the worst men could be, and the best. The anonymity of the enemy, as Nolan said "it is a disaster movie, not a war movie". The chaos of it, the sense of being swept along by larger events.

I agree the ending was "tidy" but that's a small part of the movie. But 300k men were taken off the beach at Dunkirk, an extraordinary achievement. And, even then, the newspaper at the end ...

I liked it as much as I liked say "The Longest Day" or "Full Metal Jacket" or "Cross of Iron".

They interviewed many of the remaining Dunkirk survivors when they wrote the script.

For me, I could see my father's family on that beach-- Army, Navy & RAF. That absolute determination to follow orders, and to do their duty, even in the most desperate circumstances.

I had a cousin who was a dead ringer for the Colonel on the beach. Had he been at Dunkirk, he would have behaved exactly like that*. In fact, I had a great uncle who was a career officer in the Royal Navy. He would have been exactly like the Kenneth Branagh character, the RN officer on the mole. Another great uncle flew Lancaster bombers, and the RAF Spitfire pilot frantically doing fuel calculations with chalk on the instrument panel? Yes, that was about right.

* a regular army officer, he was held back from France at the beginning of the war. Like 1914, they thought it would settle into an entrenched bloodbath, and they would need experienced officers and NCOs to rebuild the regiment after the first battles. He later earned several medals in the Mediterranean theatre. A junior officer on the western front in 1994 in Europe, for any side, did not have great odds of survival.

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Fuller review above, trying not to give away any spoilers. True story: in France in 1940 the Germans reached the Channel within a month, cutting off the British Expeditionary Force (and some French) from the rest of the French Army. The Belgian Army then surrendered, and there was a desperate mission, Operation Dynamo, to get the British and French troops off the beaches at the seaside town of Dunkirk.

Military estimates were that they could save around 30,000 soldiers. In reality, they saved over 300k, partly due to Hitler's orders to stop the Panzer (tank) divisions from pressing on the British rearguards (why is still hotly debated, best guess is Goring, head of the Luftwaffe, promised Hitler the Luftwaffe could do the job of destroying the BEF for him). And partly due to superb efforts by the Royal Navy and the simple ingenuity of the men on the beach.

This is not your typical war movie. It's not graphic in a blood and guts sense, which one could say makes it unrealistic, but there's a limit to how many times you can stick that on the screen (I think it's some of the Korean films which are particularly brutal in that regard). The violence is on the other hand at times almost unwatchable-- the movie can be totally claustrophobic.

The director, Christopher Nolan, has described it as "a disaster movie, not a war movie". And indeed that is the effect it has-- there are no Germans in the movie, although their aeroplanes are a dominant theme. It is a series of tautly told parallel stories of soldiers trying to get off the beach, RAF Spitfire pilots fighting desperately in the skies above, and the "small boats" conscripted by the Royal Navy to aid in the evacuation. The director deliberately chose young actors, the same ages as their real counterparts would have been.

It was filmed with little or no CGI, the boats they used were actual survivors from the "small boats" that were used as part of the evacuation of Dunkirk. The planes also were flying remnants of the planes that fought in WW2. As the producer said, there's not many left, and it's unlikely such a film could be made this way again.

There are moments which are straight "war movie" - the binoculars moment. But I had relatives who served in the RAF, RN & British Army-- and the characterizations actors like Kenneth Branagh portray ring true. Had they been on that beach, as they were in other, later, desperate fights, that's how they would have conducted themselves.

The movie makes war to be a catastrophe and one which changes the people who participate in it in ways the rest of us will never quite understand.

As a "war movie", but one devoid of most of the usual cliches, I rate it very highly.

Hacksaw Ridge (2016) Andrew Garfield, Vince Vaughn. Directed by Mel Gibson, this is the story of Desmond Doss, a Seventh-Day Adventist conscientious objector who served in WWII as a combat medic after being scrutinized and humiliated for being non-violent and wishing to not carry a weapon during battle. He eventually saves upwards of seventy soldiers by himself while the company takes Hacksaw Ridge on Okinawa. It's kinda hunky dory but also gory, however it brings out the emotions as you can't help but side with Doss as it must take some sort of supernatural bravery to enter into battle unarmed and live to save that many men, some of whom beat him for not taking up arms during training. Video footage of Doss and his company captain provide more evidence to his bravery at the end of the movie. 3/5

ruralavalon wrote:Murder in Mesopotamia, on Netflix. The best in my opinion, the mystery is set at archeological site in Iraq.

Five Little Pigs, on Netflix.

Sad Cypress, on Netflix.

All are movie versions of Agatha Christie murder mysteries, featuring Hercule Poirot. Am I stuck in a rut???? Yes, I will probably watch the whole series. They are excellent so far.

A double whammy! Agatha Christie and David Suchet are both hard habits to break!

If you liked Murder in Mesopotamia you will probably also like Appointment with Death, another archeological dig story. It deserves special mention because the main protagonist is played by Tim Curry, billed second to Suchet.

This movie is based on a true story. Boxer Chuck Wepner had opportunities to get
in the ring with some high profile fighters, his biggest claim to fame was staying in
the ring through(but not finishing) the 15th round with Mohammed Ali in 1975.
Even though he took a pounding and lost the fight he amazed everyone by actually
knocking Ali to the canvas in the 9th round. According to the movie, Wepner was
the inspiration for Sylvester Stallones's Rocky. The movie also profiled Wepner's
tumultuous private life. As an added bonus: the gaudy clothes, battleship sized cars,
and music(not bad) of the 1970s.

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